Tag: pornography

I Modi or The Ways was a book of engravings depicting sixteen sexual positions. Think of it as The Joy of Sex for Renaissance times. The book, also known as The Sixteen Pleasures, was published by the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi in 1524. Raimondi based his explicit illustrations on a series of erotic privately owned paintings by Giulio Romano. The book was widely circulated. It led to the first prosecution for pornography by the Catholic church. Raimondi was imprisoned by Pope Clement VII. All copies of the book were destroyed.Our story doesn’t end there, as the poet and satirist Pietro Aretino heard of the book and wished to see Romano’s original paintings. Interestingly, Romano was not prosecuted by the Pope as his paintings (unlike Raimondi’s book) were not meant for public consumption. Aretino decided to write a series of erotic sonnets to accompany the paintings. He also successfully campaigned to have Raimondi released from prison.

In 1527, a second edition of I Modi was published with Aretino’s sonnets. Once again the Pope banned the book and all copies were destroyed—only a few small fragments of I Modi or Aretino’s Postures survive which are held at the British Museum.

In 1798 a completely new version of I Modi was published in France under the title L’Arétin d’Augustin Carrache ou Recueil de Postures Érotiques, d’Après les Gravures à l’Eau-Forte par cet Artiste Célèbre, Avec le Texte Explicatif des Sujets (The ‘Aretino’ of Agostino Carracci, or a collection of erotic poses, after Carracci’s engravings, by this famous artist, with the explicit texts on the subject) based on engravings by Baroque painter Agostini Carracci was published.

These 18th century engravings mixed classical myth and history within a contemporary setting—though their intention is still the same—to arouse and “educate” users to the joys of sex.

The frontispiece to the book the goddess of love, sex, beauty and fertility Venusdescending on a chariot.

See you this Tuesday at TIME-Bohemian Absinthe Lounge. The Bad Boy of Romance, Sascha Illyvich will WoW us with his steamy words.

Rule 34: What It Says About Your Sexuality

By Dr. Marty Klein from his newsletter ‘Sexual Intelligence.’

Rule 34: If it exists, or you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions.

Rule 34 summarizes everything about sexuality.

It says that human sexual fantasy is limitless. It says that anything can be eroticized, can be arousing, can be life-affirming. It reminds us that any ideas we have about what’s normal sex are about us, not about sex. I’m always telling patients “don’t blame sex for your ideas about sex.”

Rule 34 reminds us exactly what pornography is: a library of human eroticism. Pornography is a celebration of how humans can stretch their erotic imagination—sometimes in ways that disturb you or me. Nevertheless, pornography celebrates the erotic imagination BEYOND specific content. Like the ability to imagine the future, and the knowledge that we’re going to die, the enormous range of pornography is uniquely human.

Rule 34 also reminds us that people don’t necessarily want to do what they fantasize about. Sex with Kramer, George, & Jerry at the same time? Sex with a dolphin? Sex with someone about to be guillotined for stealing a loaf of bread? Sex with your grandmother at high noon on Times Square? A threesome with Batman & Robin?

Rule 34 also reminds us of the coin’s other side—that none of us can imagine the entire range of human eroticism. That should keep us humble. It’s somewhat like a gourmet travelling to a far-off, isolated country and discovering they eat something there he never considered food—say, fried worms. The issue isn’t so much does the gourmet want to eat fried worms; rather, it’s the idea that there’s “food” that he never considered food. And if that’s true about fried worms, about how many other “foods” might that also be true?

Rule 34 shows us all knit together in an erotic brotherhood (or sisterhood, if you will). If the human project of eroticism is bigger than both you and me, your turn-on and my turn-on that appear so different from each other are really small parts of a much bigger whole. And there are others who are into your turn-on (which I find so exotic), and there are others—perhaps many others—who think my turn-on is so very exotic.

Imagine travelling to another country whose customs may be unfamiliar. We go to Italy and see adults and children topless together on the same beach. We go to India and see cows on the street. We go to Vietnam and see old women doing manual labor on construction sites. We go to Denmark and see men and women nude in a sauna together. We go to Russia and learn we have to bribe taxi drivers with Marlboros if we want them to pick us up.

International travel teaches us about our own customs: when I return from a trip I’ve always learned something about the way WE do things, because I’ve been to a place where they don’t do that. I learn that my way isn’t the right way, it’s just my way. No matter how much I prefer it, no matter how much it’s right for me, it’s just my way, not the right way.

Rule 34 helps us understand that about sexuality. Your porn isn’t right, it’s just your porn. That goes for No Porn, and Gentle Porn, too: it isn’t right, it’s just your way. And that goes for our sexuality in general—our way isn’t the right way, it’s just our way. A good sexual relationship involves people whose respective ways mesh: one person expands their vocabulary, or both do, or one narrows theirs, or both do. As long as people can fit together with dignity and celebration (um, there’s MY values again), it doesn’t matter what they do.

Rule 34: everyone else is different from you. But governments, religions, and activists try to whitewash almost every kind of sexuality except the version they approve of. As biologist Mickey Diamond says, nature loves variety; unfortunately, society hates it.

A colleague of mine wrote this excellent article published in Psychology Today on this proposed bill.

Utah Declares War On Porn Epidemic

David J. Ley Ph.d.

Utah state Senate resolution that porn is addictive and destructive to marriage

Utah Declares War on Porn Epidemic

Republican State Senator Todd Weiler in Utah has introduced a resolution to the Utah legislature, calling on the State to recognize and oppose the destructive, addictive nature of pornography. Disturbingly, this legislative action is based on hyperbole and morality, ignoring much of what is known about pornography and its effects. Further, the Senator’s resolution relies on pseudoscience in a manner which has no place in governmental action.

The bill suggests that pornography represents a public health crisis, damaging teens’ brains, affecting the state of marriage, increasing rates of rape and sexual violence, and causing a host of other social problems. Weiler calls on the State Government of Utah to engage in education, research and prevention efforts to address this “epidemic.”

It would take far too long to address in entirety, each of the insubstantial claims made by Weiler’s resolution, but a few salient points are clear:

WHEREAS, this early exposure is leading to low self-esteem and body imagedisorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior;

Weiler suggests that pornography exposure causes low self-esteem in teens, and leads to risky sexual behaviors. In fact, a massive study in the United Kingdom, which reviewed over 40,000 research articles on the effects of porn on teens was unable to substantiate any such effects. A longitudinal study conducted in the Netherlands found that pornography exposure in teens explained less than 1% of the behavior of such teens, including risky sexual behavior. Blaming porn for such problems is a distraction of the worst sort, ignoring the critical issues of education, poverty, family variables and substance use/mental health

WHEREAS, exposure to pornography often serves as childrens’ and youths’ sex education and shapes their sexual templates;

The Weiler resolution suggests that pornography often serves as sex education for teens and children. Here, surprisingly, we agree. Pornography unfortunately IS often a form of sex education for youth, most notably, when they have not received sex education which adequately prepares the youth for the world of modern sexuality. Weiler seems to be indicting the state of Utah’s sex education curriculum. One can only hope that he will thus support greater sex education efforts for youth in Utah. (Utah is currently embroiled in a battle against comprehensive sex education)

WHEREAS, recent research indicates that pornography is potentially biologically
addictive, which means the user requires more novelty, often in the form of more shocking material, in order to be satisfied;
WHEREAS, this biological addiction leads to increasing themes of risky sexual
behaviors, extreme degradation, violence, and child sexual abuse images and child pornography;

SCR 9 suggests that pornography use causes a biological addiction, which leads to desire for more extreme porn, and which causes sexual violence, including sexual abuse of children. Sadly, Weiler appears unaware of the wealth of research demonstrating that increased porn access in societies correlates strongly with a decrease in sexual violence and sexual crimes. Further, Weiler’s promotion of the concept of porn addiction in legislation, furthers psychological damage to the citizens of Utah. Research has shown that belief in porn addiction causes feelings of distress and depression, feelings unrelated to actual porn use.

WHEREAS, pornography use is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry,
dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity;
WHEREAS, this link demonstrates that pornography has a detrimental effect on the
family unit;

It’s in the final terms of Weiler’s bill though, where his conservative interests become most clear. Throughout the resolution, it is clear that Weiler believes that it is men who watch porn, and women who are abused by it. There is a pervasive heteronormative tone throughout the resolution, suggesting that Weiler’s main concern is that pornography decreases males’ interest in marrying women and having children. The fact that pornography is often a safe, healthy outlet for women, and for those who are not heterosexual, and live in socially conservative areas such as Utah, seems ignored.

There’s really little new in Weiler’s resolution. The Meese Commission, US Senate hearings by Sam Brownback, etc, have all involved political efforts to deem pornography as a public health issue. Pseudoscience such as sex addiction, or the famous testimony about “erototoxins” often makes an appearance, to support the moral agenda which is truly behind these politics. In Utah, groups such as Fight the New Drug are presenting similar morally-laden pseudoscience in public schools, in place of sexual education.

Utah is, according to numerous reports, one of the states with the highest rates of pornography use in the US. In 2013, Weiler introduced a similar resolution, which was passed by the Utah senate, declaring that pornography was a “gateway” behavior which affected teens’ brains. Clearly, Weiler, and the Utah Senate are concerned about what high rates of porn use in their state will do. Perhaps they should instead be wondering what it means, that so many in Utah are unable to express or understand their sexual desires, and turn to pornography as a private outlet. Utah remains committed to abstinence only sexual education, and prohibits teachers from instructing teens about contraception.

Your Belief in Porn Addiction Makes Things Worse

Porn addiction is the idea that people (namely men) can become addicted to the widespread pornography, now so easily available on the Internet. You can’t turn over a rock these days, without finding some article, website, advocacy group, or therapist, claiming that porn addiction is a dangerous public health problem. The concept of porn addiction has a self-sustaining momentum, with online self-help groups, websites, TED talks, nonprofit groups, discussion boards and television shows, all promoting the idea that pornography triggers reward processes in the brain, and thus has the potential to become an addictive, destructive behavior. But, in recent years, chips have begun to appear in the facade of this monolithic morally-based concept.

In January 2015, Joshua Grubbs of Case Western, published (link is external)powerful research showing that seeing oneself as a porn addict was predicted not by how much porn one views, but by the degree of religiosity and moral attitudes towards sex. Now(link is external), Grubbs has published explosive follow-up research, demonstrating that believing oneself is addicted to porn actually causes pain and psychological problems, in contrast to the idea that identifying as a porn addict is a part of a road to recovery.

Grubbs is a careful and thorough researcher, whose methodology is always well-planned and detailed. He’s not a “one and done” kind of researcher. Instead, his research often involves multiple connected studies, which serve to demonstrate the replicability of his findings, and offer the ability to follow threads of causality and theory through multiple groups and strategies. This study is no exception.

Grubbs started with a large cross-section of adults (1,047 total; 619 women, 422 men, six prefer not to say) drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (link is external)workforce database. 713 of these participants acknowledged using porn in the past year (338 women, 370 men, five prefer not to say). Researchers then assessed frequency of pornography use and perceived addiction to pornography, by looking at self-perceived compulsivity, how much effort the person puts into viewing porn, and degree of emotional distress related to porn use. Next, researchers identified several components of psychological distress, including depression, stress and anxiety. Finally, they measured personality traits, to ensure that they could rule out effects of personality, from the effects of pornography, and perceived porn addiction.

In these data, daily porn use was weakly related to feelings of anger. But, seeing oneself as a porn addict was strongly correlated with depression, anxiety, anger and stress. The effects of personality traits such as neuroticism, which would predict higher levels of negative emotional states, regardless of other issues, were statistically managed to assure that the effects detected were related to the variables of perceived porn addiction.

Grubbs’ team then replicated this study with another cross-sectional pool of participants, this time from three different universities. Out of 3,055 students assessed, 1,215 (396 women, 816 men, three prefer not to say) admitted to using porn in the past year. Results supported again that actual porn use had no reliable relationship to emotional issues, but perceiving oneself as addicted to porn did (again, anxiety, anger, stress, and especially depression were predicted by how strongly someone felt they were addicted to porn).

Cross-sectional research design is a common limitation to interpreting causality, especially in research with porn or sex. Cross-sectional research only allows a “snapshot in time” and cannot truly reveal causation or “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” So, Grubbs’ team then did a one-year follow-up on the students. Longitudinal research in this manner is the gold-standard for better understanding what things actually cause the problems, as opposed to merely finding a correlation.

392 of the students were eligible for the one year follow-up, and 106 completed the follow-up assessment. While that might seem like a small number for follow-up, analyses between this group and the other baseline participants showed that there were no significant differences. Thus, this followed-up sample is a good representation of the larger group.

Analyses confirmed that the self-perception as a porn addict predicted distress one year later, where either porn use or personality characteristics did not. If someone believed they were a sex addict, this belief predicted downstream psychological suffering, no matter how much, or how little, porn they were actually using.

This means that the large-scale promotion of the concept of “porn addiction,” in the media, on the Internet, by self-proclaimed experts and by an industry that preys off of an unrecognized disorder, appear to actually be hurting people. By telling people that their use of porn constitutes a disease, they are promulgating suffering and anxiety, instilling into people that their use of pornography means there is something wrong with them, and that this use has potentially dire consequences.

The word iatrogenic(link is external) describes illnesses or damages that are acquired as a result of treatment. If you go into a hospital for an appendectomy, and get a staph infection in the hospital, that’s iatrogenic harm. The porn addiction treatment model is iatrogenic, creating harm under the guise of providing treatment and support.

The model of porn addiction is one which serves many people, those who sell treatments for it, those who believe that sex and porn should be feared or controlled, and those who believe that they are helping others by spreading the word about the dangers of porn addiction. Unfortunately, this concept is now shown to do a disservice to the very people it purports to help.

It’s no surprise to me that the label of porn addicts predicts fear, distress, depression and anger. Over recent years, I’ve seen many vulnerable people call themselves a porn addict, with much shame and fear, despite using less porn than many other people. As with Grubbs’ research, I’ve found that this self-imposed label has much to do with moral values about sex and pornography, and often comes from an impoverished understanding of human sexuality. People walk into my office reporting this, and contact me online, after they’ve been shamed and labelled in online discussion groups. When one has little understanding that ALL people struggle at times with their sexual desires, it’s very easy to listen to moralizing proclaimers of doom, and declare one’s sexual desires to be abnormal and unhealthy.

The large industry of intertwined media, therapists, coaches and advocates who have obsessively and gleefully promoted the idea that porn is addictive, claim that they help people by providing an explanation and an intervention for the problems related to porn. In response to Grubbs’ findings, it’s now their obligation to demonstrate empirically that their label, their treatments and their theories are beneficial. Because right now, the evidence suggests that their treatment is hurting people.

The people who are making money and fame from the idea of porn addiction may claim that science hasn’t looked at their theories the right way – or looked at the right people. They may try to discredit the work done by Grubbs, and challenge his findings. These proponents of porn addiction treatment will have to produce real research that supports their actual work, rather than mere extrapolations from other findings. Until then, the model of porn addiction is an unethical, harmful treatment which exploits people, just like the hucksters who sold snake oil and things like radioactive (link is external)materials as medicine were engaged in harmful, dangerous and illegal practice.

EBOOK – “SenSexual: A Unique Anthology 2013”

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4 Videos Below-Readings are only recorded at the request of the presenter.

Monica Day performance/reading two poems: The Fifth Year and This is My Body for January 2013 Erotic Literary Salon
M. Dante reading SKIN dedicated to the art and inspiration of Heide Hatry for December 2013 Erotic Literary Salon
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Dr. Susana Mayer’s NBC10 interview of “50 Shades of Grey”